I’m sorry that I’ve been so lazy lately. I wanted to let you know that I haven’t fallen off the wagon or anything. (Who is driving/steering the wagon, btw? I like to think it’s Richard Simmons, and he’s shouting encouragements to us as we bounce along.) Well, anyway I’ve still been counting and going strong, except yesterday.

Yesterday was a weird day. I think sometimes my hormones are like “Today we’re just going to do whatever the hell we want, and that means that today is going to be graze-like-a-cow day. Now head to the kitchen!” It’s funny. Once every so often my ability to reason is literally overridden by some PMS-type of self-entitlement that translates into me being really feisty and insatiable. Yesterday was that day. Luckily it really only happens once every six months or so.

So what would I do if I had fallen off the wagon, and Richard Simmons was shouting for me to run and catch up? I think that’s the problem with falling off the wagon. We think that the wagon doesn’t wait for us, and that’s the idea behind the saying. But we need to think of it differently. We need to think that there are lots of other wagons coming along, or the wagon will always wait for us.

Lots of times when we mess up a diet, we have this terrible bout of all-or-nothing thinking. It’s like we just say “well I really screwed the pooch on that one–guess I’ll just go to Golden Corral and make it official.” But we should realize that it’s okay to slip up. In case we do, we should just do what the British say, which is “Keep calm and carry on.” Maybe all dieters should put that famous slogan somewhere in their kitchen or someplace they’d see it. Here’s what it looks like:

So that’s what to do when you find yourself in the dirt looking at the backside of a wagon. Keep calm and carry on. You don’t have to run to catch up, so there’s no need to panic. Just go right back to what you were doing before.

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In other news, I’ve had a revelation. I used to use Thursday nights as my TGIT (I don’t work on Fridays) culinary celebration. On Thursday nights I’d eat Chinese usually. Chinese is difficult to measure though because there’s really no telling what’s in it. Do they put 4 tablespoons of sugar in something that you don’t even think of as sweet? How much sesame oil is topping off this dish? No one knows. So Chinese, while fine to eat when calorie counting, isn’t exactly the best choice for a weekly meal. (Once a week= 4 times a month= 48 times a year. $14 x 48 = $672 a year on Chinese food. YIPES!) I realized that if I’m going to spend $675 dollars on something, I’d rather it didn’t make me fat.

Sushi! I love sushi. Of course, I don’t eat any of the raw stuff, but I still love the rest of it. Sushi is considerably more healthy than Chinese food that’s deep fried and soaked in sugar and oil. So I can eat sushi for my TGIT meals and still get that TGIT feeling without as many calories. Genius! I should get a Nobel Peace Prize for this.

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Lastly, I think I’m going to lower my calories after Christmas. I want to speed up the weight loss, and it’s coming off so SLOWLY. I know that weight loss is just like the story of the tortoise and the hare, so I’m not going to just drink salt water and eat a can of tuna a day, but I’m going to lower my calorie intake to 1,500 after Christmas. I’d do it before, but I won’t lie, I want to be able to eat more Christmas cookies.

I don’t know if this is a “bad” move or not. I think it’s fine. It should just move me past the current plateau that I’m on. Right now I’m eating on a diet more than what most women should have in a normal day. Granted, I’m pretty tall, but still, I don’t think it’s going to kill me to slash a few more calories.

Welp, that’s all for now. I hope you’re all having a good time as Christmas approaches, and I especially hope you’ve been nice so Santy won’t have you on the naughty list. (I’m a lifetime member of the naughty list, but Santy is forgiving!)

Wow. I can honestly say I never thought I’d say this, ever. But I agree with Rosie O’Donnell.

I didn’t trust her at all back in the day when she had a talk show and was obsessed with Tom Cruise. I know Tom Cruise does it for some people, but not for me. I’ve always been more of a Hugh Jackman girl, and if he’s not available, call Clive Owen or Daniel Craig.

But Rosie O said that “exposure to the sun isn’t dangerous,” and I agree. Now, before the skin cancer lynch mob successfully beats down my door, I must clarify my own position on this issue and give some background on my opinion.

This country has a terrible problem with cancer. All types of cancer. This has really puzzled scientists and doctors and all sorts of people who wear white coats to work. But recently, the UC San Diego’s School of Medicine had a lightbulb moment about cancer and a possible cause. They realized that many of the diseases that plague modern society and are often blamed on pollution, plastic, sugar etc etc, might actually be caused by a vitamin D deficiency. (I would normally shorten that to VD, but I’m not feeling that playful tonight.) In fact, the math/science types at UCSD made an entire website devoted to vitamin D deficiency. I suggest you check it out.

Why does the modern world have such a serious problem with vitamin D? Because the body makes vitamin D naturally… from sunlight exposure. We’re known for sitting on our butts inside all day at work until we drive home to sit on our butts inside there. For one week in the summer we go to the beach and either wear enough sunscreen to make coworkers think we lied about going, or so little that the chef at the seafood restaurant chases us with a pot of boiling water, thinking we’re lobsters. Neither of these is good, because we should take our sunlight in moderation, because, as my mother says, “the skin never forgets a ray of sun,” or so we’ve been told.

Unfortunately, certain people aren’t privy to as much sunlight as others. Canadians, for instance, don’t get nearly as much strong sunlight as we southerners do. Neither do people in Maine, North Dakota, or Michigan. All of those people have worse cancer problems than those who do get regular sun.

Now I’m not any sort of “back to nature” type, but I do think that earlier people did something right (except in the Middle Ages, when they all died at 25). They walked around outside, and they ate natural food. Oreos were hard to come by in the 3rd century. We should probably take the hint, and do more of what they did, like spending some time outside without sunscreen.

Naturally, when Rosie O said what she did, the skin cancer people grabbed their ropes and ran out the door, then ran back in and slathered on the SPF 120, then ran out again, hot on Rosie’s trail. They said what she said was “irresponsible.” I think her flock of seagulls hair cut was more irresponsible than this episode, but tomato/ tomahto.

Apparently the research is so strong that the Canadian government has recommended that all Canadians take a superdose of the vitamin in order to stave off cancer and other diseases. It really makes sense, I think. We’ve switched from spending tons of time outside to almost none in about a century, and consequently, diseases are stalking us. Consider this: the “flu season.” Why is it that the flu comes in winter and stays til early spring until it magically disappears? It’s because people aren’t going outside in the cold winter, and they don’t have any vitamin D to fight off getting sick. Once the weather improves and it’s nice outside though–wham! People are out in the sun again, making boatloads of vitamin D, effectively ending the flu season. Interesting thought, no?

Now I’m not sure I agree with Rosie O entirely, however, because she also says she “lives to tan.” I’ve never liked lying around in the sun, because I’ve always been afraid that a bug would crawl on me. But what’s wrong with working in the yard for 30 minutes in the heat of the day?

Whenever I go to the beach and don’t put on too much sunscreen, my skin improves within 2 or 3 days. I usually don’t have breakouts for a week or more after being in the sun. This is not to say that we should get burned, though. Being fair-skinned, I’d have to work up to a tan in 30 minute increments before I could spend more time out without sunscreen. If you’re going to be in very very strong sun, you should wear sunscreen if you’re starting to burn.

The white lab coat people suggest that we spend 15-20 minutes in the very strong sun every day (with zero sunscreen and at least 40% of the body exposed). This isn’t always possible, because it gets cold in the winter. That’s why instead of spending the time outside, you can take vitamin D3 gelcaps to make up for it. You probably shouldn’t exceed 3000 Iu (international units) a day if you’re getting solar-powered vitamin D, but the jury is still out on exact dosages. Also, it takes your body about 48 hrs to absorb all the vitamin D from your skin, so when you shower, don’t scrub the areas that were exposed to sun, or else you’ll wash all the vitamin D down the drain.

So that’s something to think about. People who get vitamin D are far less likely to develop cancer.

Take my own grandfather, for example. He was a smoker. When I say “smoker” I mean he was a cigarette with a person attached. He started smoking when he was about 8 or 9, and did so until his emphysema prevented him in his 80s, but even then he chewed tobacco and smoked a pipe. He also was a supervisor for Bell South, so he spent all day at work standing in the hot southern sun making sure that workmen put up phone lines correctly. He was unbelievably tan. Brown. If his skin were a trendy paint color it would be “toasted autumn.” For all that smoking, he never had cancer, or any other non-smoking related disease. Even when he was retired, he took long walks outside every day. And he didn’t wear sunscreen, let’s just say that.

I think we’ve all heard this one. Don’t eat one huge meal, or three normal meals, but rather six small meals a day.

In the past, on all my various diet debacles, I’ve flirted with the idea of Body for Life, and that is one of the programs that makes you eat 5 or 6 small meals a day. I think the South Beach diet might also encourage multiple small meals.

Why is this? Where did all this “eat six small meals a day” business come from anyway?

When I was growing up, I heard, as I’m sure you’ve heard, “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” As I’ve said before, I don’t understand why the king and the prince aren’t eating the same thing, but no matter–you get the idea.

The point of the six small meals is two-fold: it keeps your metabolism from slowing down because there’s always a new supply of food, and it keeps your energy levels high for the same reason.

1.) It keeps your metabolism high.

Remember the post not too long ago about reworking your metabolism? Read it here. Basically what I said there is that when you aren’t eating, your metabolism slows down. The capability of our metabolism to speed and slow based on the needs of our body is actually really useful. Well, it would be more useful if we were cave people, and maybe it’ll come in handy again after a nuclear holocaust. But it doesn’t slow without a reason, and that reason is most often lack of new energy (food) entering the system.

Doesn’t this seem like a catch-22, though? Think about it. You’ve got to eat more to burn more. It doesn’t really make that much sense, but that’s how it works. I’m convinced that our minds are always thinking beyond our own reasoning, so when we realize that this is just the way it is, our “back burner” part of the brain doesn’t believe it, and that keeps us from really committing ourselves to acting on it.

Basically what eating six small meals a day does is convince your body that there is new food coming in all the time; there’s no need to worry–you don’t have to bank what you don’t use. That way the body starts working with the energy you’re supplying to it much more efficiently.

2.) Your energy level stays high.

This is the same idea as the metabolism. When your body has a constant supply of food, your metabolism doesn’t slow and you don’t get that low blood sugar empty feeling that makes you want to tear through your kitchen like the monster in a godzilla movie.

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Now I’ve often thought of scheduling my eating along these lines, but it wasn’t until last night at about 8:30 when I was standing in my kitchen griping about how I didn’t have anything to eat that I realized that the problem has a fairly easy solution. Six small meals a day!

Why hadn’t I ever actually tried it? Because it seemed like so much work. I’m a busy person who doesn’t have time to measure out almonds with a pharmacy pill counter six times a day. But last night the answer clicked.

Just divide your calories allowed by six! Duh. So if I’m allowed 1,758 calories a day, then each meal on the six-meal plan would amount to 293 calories or fewer. Since it’s so close to a rounder number, I could shoot for 300 and go easy on the last one, or something like that.

So what I should do is this: get healthy food (because eating six Krispy Kreme donuts a day isn’t exactly a balanced diet), stock the Ranch with fresh fruits and other easy things, and then decide on the intervals. Since I still like making real food and cooking, I’d probably combine two of the meals a day or so for supper.

The schedule would look something like this:

8-9:45 ish — breakfast of grits and butter

11:00 ish — a banana and an apple

1:00pm ish — sandwich

3:00pm ish — nuts or a slug o’ peanut butter (I’d eat something here, but come in way under 300 so my supper could be a bit bigger)

Honestly, that doesn’t seem so bad at all. In fact, it will be good for me, and I’m almost sure it will speed up my rate of weight loss. I’ve been ending many days with 700+ calories left to go, and while I’ve been losing weight for sure, I’m getting low blood sugary at times, and that’s a feeling I hate.

So if any of you are going to try this, let me know. I’m sure some of you have done it before, maybe on South Beach.

Today as I was cruising the internet celebrity smut (I think this is what women look at in the same quantities that nasty men look at porn), I noticed Meg Ryan at the premier of her movie Serious Moonlight, and I decided it’s time for the Calorie Counter to give the internet a lesson on pretty.

Basically, this is a giant comment on restraint and self control.

We (I) want to be skinny. I believe that being so will improve the overall quality of my life, as well as my downstairs neighbor’s life (old wooden floors). But seeing the pictures of Meg Ryan made me think I really shouldn’t wait to get there before I start enjoying “skinny things.” In other words, it’s time to be happy with who and what we are, even if we see that we need improvement.

Too often in our culture, we think that we can improve on a situation without resolving the underlying issue. In lots of cases, people want lap-band surgery or gastric bypass surgery so that they will finally be happy. But having a plastic boa constrictor on you intestines isn’t going to change the way you see things, and lying on an operating table for 8 hours to have your stomach reshaped from a watermelon to an egg isn’t going to do it either.

So let’s start being happy with who we are now. As an example of trying too hard, let’s have a looksee at Meg Ryan. Or as I like to call her nowadays, The Meg Ryan Who Stole Christmas.

Now I’ve never liked Sleepless in Seattle, *the calorie counter ducks as shoes and rotten fruit fly through the air on a collision course with her face and the crowd starts hysterically screaming and crying* but I didn’t hate You’ve Got Mail. Those two movies are the extent of my pre-trout (you’ll see) knowledge of Meg Ryan, and I remember her being likable.

Here’s Meg Ryan before she was abducted by school of alien trout and replaced by her own half fish/ half human daughter:

Pretty, no? Normal, even.

And here she is post-op/abduction: (Not for the easily frightened or those prone to nightmares. You’ve been warned.)

…Oh… oh goodness… what time is it? Crap. I passed out for 18 minutes. What can I say–a picture of Megatrout Ryan to my eyes is like an ether soaked rag to my face.

So the lesson here is–you can always lose weight, but Meg Ryan can never get her face back. So don’t let something like a few extra pounds keep you from enjoying your life, and don’t try to be something you’re not (like a fish).

Now, enough about trout people. Let’s talk about me!

I know that I said I was going walking the other morning, but I didn’t. I know, I know, but it was so cold outside! To make up for it, a group of friends and I played in a dodgeball tournament that night, and we won 2 games (out of 9, but who’s counting?)! It was quite the workout. I haven’t run any distance in over a year, so to go from sedentary to sprint-dodge-duck-jump-shimmy-sashay-sidestep-run-walk-jazzhands-sprint mode was quite the shock to my leg and back and torso muscles. As a result, all of the above have decided to take the next few days off and not do much movement. Consequently, I am a wee bit sore.

But the good news is, there is a intramural team in the spring, and I might join it.

As for what I’ve eaten today–leftovers from last night (turkey with taco seasoning, sour cream, black beans) and cheese grits this morning. Also I’ve started drinking tea in the mornings and it really zaps my appetite… probably because I’ve got the shakes from all the caffeine.

Goodnight, readers. I hope you can sleep after seeing the trout who stole Christmas.

Today I had a very strange eating day. I drank tea in the morning, ate grits for lunch, a peanut butter slug for a snack, and had a Chinese soup feast for supper.

None of it was very good. First, the tea was bitter because I let it steep too long; secondly I didn’t have any butter for the grits, and finally my Chinese soup feast was disappointing. I’m not sure why I didn’t enjoy the soup very much, but part of it has to be the fact that the wontons are filled with a mystery meat, and as I was about to bite into the first one, I wondered what meat it was. Pork? Beef? Then my mind flashed back to a conversation with my mother several days ago in which she told me that some lady she works with adopted a Korean baby, and Koreans really do eat dogs, but only a certain dark-meat kind, and only in the winter. (Shiver fest. I know.) So from then on, I’d look apologetically to my dog before each bite. I felt like I was eating MSG-soaked dog-meat dumplings that were floating in a cesspool of polluted sea water. I actually ended up spitting out most of the (dog?) meat and only ate the noodle part.

But that’s not important. What is important is that I’m walking tomorrow!

I’m going to get up early and hit the freezing cold road. Walking is very important, and the dog gets antsy when she has to stay inside all day, so it’s win-win. I really want to invest in spandex sports britches, because the world doesn’t have enough fat people in spandex. Seriously I want them because I think they’ll let me walk faster. I’m sort of self-conscious of all fat jiggles as I walk. I know that most people who see me probably think, “Good for her,” but I’d rather not wonder what they’re thinking at all. Knowing that the jiggly bits aren’t jiggly will make it all more painless for me.

Walking is the best form of exercise for the following reasons.

-Anyone can do it.

-It can be sustained much easier than running. (This is important because you only burn fat when you’ve already burned the sugar in your body. In other words, your body keeps the fat for last, so you have to exercise over a longer period of time so that you can get rid of the sugar, then start melting some of that fat. Running, unless you are a distance runner or an experienced jogger, usually results in a 20 minute or so burst of energy that only burns off the sugar. In other words, endurance is where it’s at.)

-It doesn’t require special equipment.

-You can (and should) do it anywhere.

-It’s easy to find a partner because it’s such an accessible exercise.

-You can bring your pets!

If you can think of any of the other reasons that walking is so good for you, please share them with us all.

Sorry–this is going to be another short post. I’m going to be really busy until I can finally take a few weeks vacation in December, but I have to relate a small victory.

As you all know, I decided that on Thanksgiving I would be thankful for sweets and casseroles and fattening things, and I most certainly was. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened over the holiday.

I GOT MY FIRST “YOU’VE LOST WEIGHT!”

Yep. I did. I was at church Thanksgiving morning, and a lady I’ve known my whole life came up to me and said, “Well you just look so good–you look like you’ve lost some weight.” It was all I could do not to jump up and down and scream “Hot diggity damn straight, lady!” Instead, I was so surprised that I said, “Err well I mean, no, well maybe like a pound or not even that, so no but maybe a few pounds.” Then immediately I felt like an ass for denying someone a compliment, which I’m told is rude.

But still, she said it. And she’s not even related to me. And she doesn’t know that I’ve been trying. So I was pretty stoked about that. I thought I would share with you, and let it be encouragement to you all in your own attempts!

I’m so pumped up about it, I think I’m going to go for a butt-crack-of-dawn early walk.

Today I drove 6 hrs, so I didn’t eat anything before because I don’t like to stop. (Yeah you read that right–I can hold it almost indefinitely.)

I had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I hope the same goes for you all as well. The menu included turkey, ham, crescent rolls, asparagus casserole, sweet potato casserole, macaroni and cheese, and of course dressing. For the first time in my life, I helped make it all, and for that reason it was produced much quicker than usual. We also had apple pie, fudge pie, a turkey cake, and peppermint ice cream. I ate large amounts of all of the above except turkey, because I hate turkey.

One thing I did (twice) over the holiday was go see New Moon. I’m not a movie critic, but I do play one on the internet. Here’s what I thought of it.

The movie, overall, was a significant improvement from Twilight. Chris Weitz, the director, really did a great job both staying true to the book (from what I can remember), and the actors really carried the film this time. Last time I thought that the setting was more memorable than any of the actors, and that’s not a good sign for them.

In particular, I thought that Kristen Stewart did a far better job as Bella. Not only did she not look 11, but she also didn’t chew each of her lines in her mouth before spitting them out in machine-gun bursts. I attribute this to her breaking up with her boyfriend, Michael Angarano, which consequently means she hasn’t been hitting the pipe. Remember those days? Those were dark Kristen Stewart days. Let’s have a refresher!

Ahh to be young. I think the picture above goes a long way in explaining her horrible performances in interviews leading up to the release of Twilight, and the absence of such tasteful photo-ops these days explains her better performances in the interviews promoting New Moon. Call me old-fashioned, or elitist, or a clean freak, but I prefer a showered, un-strung-out Kristen Stewart. Why not take advantage of a safe municipal water supply?

Basically, she did much better this time around. Perhaps it’s because she’s dating Robert Pattinson. Ok probably not, but did you hear the new abbreviation for these two? Krisbert. My new favorite word. It sounds like it could be so many things. A small English town, perhaps. (Cockney acccent) I’m headin up to Krisbert for the chimin o’ the bells! Or maybe an internal body part. The doctor said he’s going to run some tests and see if my krisbert isn’t out of whack. An exotic vegetable? Excuse me, sir, do you have any fresh krisberts in this harvest?

Robert Pattinson was fine. I mean that as in acceptable, satisfactory, mediocre. I wasn’t blown away. Maybe it was because he was barely in it at all. But he’s just not my type. I don’t get the hysteria. To steal a line from a friend of mine, he looks like a ball of dough dropped in hair.

Taylor Lautner, on the other hand, was A+++++++++++++. That kid earned his paycheck. He was a perfect specimen of the male body, and I was happy to spend $8 to see it. He is a terrible actor, but he’s young.

The other wolves, however, weren’t as ripped. That was a huge letdown for me. One of them was even fat, by movie standards. He had man boobs. And he was a terrible actor. Those two things led me wonder if he were possibly related to the casting director, or if said casting director owed him an inordinate amount of money. There’s no other reason I can think of that that guy would be in the movie.

Apparently there’s some hubbub about the actress that played Emily, Sam’s finance. She says she’s an American Indian, but she told the movie people that her birth certificate was lost (read ripped into tiny bits and burned), so she could get the part (will she be running for president soon?). People think that she’s actually a real Indian, like the ones in India. People think this because her parents are both Indians from India, which leads people to believe that she’s like them. A fair assumption, I say.

But the real stand out performance in the movie came from the soundtrack. It was spot on for the first half, and perfectly adequate for the second. The editors did a fantastic job with that.

There were also some really silly parts where I laughed when I wasn’t supposed to, and the wig department needs some serious funding.

But overall, I’d recommend this movie to a friend. So friends, I’m recommending it to you.